What does Yoke mean in the Bible?

What Does Yoke Mean In The Bible?

Working together.

If an ox is in a yoke to a person, the ox has constant connection with the person, plus the person is always guiding the ox.

And the earlier verse says >

"'Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.'" (Matthew 11:29)

So, the yoke of Jesus means we learn from Him who is gentle and lowly in heart. We discover how we can love because of being in His gentle and humble love. And in His love we find rest for our souls.

This is because of being connected with Jesus in His love and resting in how He guides us.

It's such a beautiful analogy that I think often gets distorted a bit (with so much emphasis of "sameness" instead of the cooperation and unity part of it).

I'd looked up a while ago about pairing oxen and found this:

Draft Animal Power said:

....most of the stuff I’ve read says that when you put a team together, you can’t split them up, swap them round or work them as a team with other animals.

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There's cooperation between the pair....and the handler (trust is necessary). Drawing any parallels there?

Oxen in training site said:

To create a strong connection between him and his future oxen, Berger bottle fed them himself, using a milk replacer.

This strong bond has, according to Burger, helped in the training process as it developed the animals’ trust in him.

An ox begins his training when he is one month old and he is put into a halter for the first time. What follows is a mixture of training in commands by his handler, socialization, exposure to implements and plow training with a driver.

Burger explained that the standard commands direct the animal without using force or violence—an ox can be told to “whoa” (stop), or “giddup” (go), which would be followed by a gentle tap with a goad.

Once you pair up animals, they become really tied to that pairing, to the extent that when one animal passes, the other animal is put down because it won’t work well with another mate.

~Oxen in training: yoked to sustainability | Voices of Central Pa

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One of the Greek words used as yoke in the bible is Zugos, it means: heavy burden, pair of scales, a balance, one unit, to pull together, or a pair of weights.

Another form of Yoke, is the Greek word, heterozugeó meaning: unequally yoked, unevenly matched, wrongly yoked, or not aptly joined.

Nathan98 said:

"my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30)?

What does it mean by yoke?

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Hopefully, the below-mentioned commentary give you the answer.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
(29) Take my yoke upon you.—As the teaching of the Pharisees was a yoke too grievous to be borne, so the yoke of Christ is His teaching, His rule of life, and so is explained by the “learn of Me” that follows. (Comp. Ecclesiasticus 51:26.)

Simply put, it means a tie.
In our belief and love we should be tied to Christ.
his burden is light in his spiritual ways.

Nathan98 said:

"my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30)?

What does it mean by yoke?

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A "yoke" is a rabbinic term that referred to the way that they taught to obey the Torah. A disciple would come under the yoke of a rabbi and learn from them how to obey it by learning how to think and act, and to essentially be made into a copy or image of their rabbi. This type of thought is expressed in 1 Corinthians 11:1, where Paul said that we are to be like him for he is like Christ and what it means for us to become like Christ and to model Christ to others as part of making disciples of all nations in the Great Commission. So in Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus was inviting people to become his disciples and learn how to serve God and walk in His ways by memorizing his teachings and by copying his example in obedience to the Torah. When he said that we will find rest for our souls, he was referencing Jeremiah 6:16-19, where the Torah is described as the good way where we will find rest for our souls. This is in contrast with how Jesus described the Pharisees as placing a heavy burden on the people that they wouldn't lift a finger to move (Matthew 23:2-4). Jesus certainly was not criticising the Pharisees for teaching the people to obey what God had commanded them to, but rather he was referring to all of their manys traditions for how they taught to obey the Torah.

In Matthew 15:2-3, Jesus was asked why his disciples were breaking the traditions of the elders and he responded by asking them why they broke the command of God for the sake of their tradition. He went on to say that for the sake of their tradition they made void the Word of God (Matthew 15:6), that they worshiped God in vain because they taught as doctrines the commands of men (Matthew 15:8-9), and that they were hypocrites for setting aside the commands of God in order to establish their own traditions (Mark 7:6-9), so it is important to understand the contrast between how the Pharisees taught to obey the Torah and how Jesus taught to obey it and lived it out, and that what the Pharisees were teaching for how to obey the Torah was in fact their own traditions. So these different ways of teaching how to obey the Torah is referred to as their yoke and we should be careful not to take something that was only against obeying what the Pharisees were teaching as being against obeying what God has commanded.

Interesting ^^

I got this from the Jewish Virtual library:

The yoke was a symbol of servitude.

In rabbinic theology the yoke is a metaphor of great importance. It is the symbol of service and servitude, and in accordance with the principle that the Jew should be free from servitude to man in order to devote himself to the service of God, the "yoke of the kingdom of man" is contrasted with "the yoke of the kingdom of heaven." The doctrine is fully enacted in the statement of *Neḥunya b. ha-Kanah : "Whoever takes upon himself the yoke of the Torah, they remove from him the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly concerns, and whoever breaks off the yoke of the Torah, they place on him the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly concerns" (Avot 3:5).~Yoke

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Like a lot of the Bible......it seems there's a lot to be gleaned from just one analogy.

From: Acceptance of the Yoke of the Commandments | My Jewish Learning

"Because the Jews constitute a covenant-community rather than a faith-community, the decision to convert is a decision not only to believe in the Jewish idea of God, but to act on that belief. When one “enters into the covenant”–the convert’s personal Sinai [the mountain where the Jewish people accepted the covenant]–one accepts the divine mandate requiring distinctive behavior. This is called “acceptance of the yoke of the commandments.”

What does this entail as a practical program? First, it necessitates acknowledgment of the authority of Torah, the five books of Moses, and the oral interpretation of that law by the sages of the and the codes of the halakhah [Jewish law]. These two components are called the “Written Torah” and “Oral Torah” and together they comprise the body of Jewish law.

The rabbis rule that the candidate for conversion may not willfully reject even one of these laws. By this they mean, basically, that the convert may not deny the rabbis’ authority to establish a particular law. Thus, the commitment to practice is referred to as kabbalat ol ha’mitzvot the “acceptance of the yoke of the commandments,” rather than by the more tepid phrase “observance of the mitzvot [commandments].” It is a recognition that, although the laws may sometimes be restrictive, they need to be accepted as authoritative notwithstanding any difficulty in keeping them.

Second, accepting the “yoke” entails a decision that goes beyond acknowledging the authority of the law. That acknowledgment must be translated into practice and acted upon. The convert’s commitment to Judaism must include a commitment to observance. This is true not only for moral laws, but also for the laws of ritual practice."

stj

What does Yoke mean in the Bible?

mkgal1 said:

Interesting ^^

I got this from the Jewish Virtual library:
"The yoke was a symbol of servitude.
In rabbinic theology the yoke is a metaphor of great importance. It is the symbol of service and servitude, and in accordance with the principle that the Jew should be free from servitude to man in order to devote himself to the service of God, the "yoke of the kingdom of man" is contrasted with "the yoke of the kingdom of heaven." The doctrine is fully enacted in the statement of *Neḥunya b. ha-Kanah : "Whoever takes upon himself the yoke of the Torah, they remove from him the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly concerns, and whoever breaks off the yoke of the Torah, they place on him the yoke of government and the yoke of worldly concerns"

Like a lot of the Bible......it seems there's a lot to be gleaned from just one analogy.

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Great post!


Deuteronomy 28:48
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which Yahweh shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things:
and He shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. [Acts 15:10/Reve 6:5]

Acts 15:10
Now then why ye are trying the God, to put a Yoke/zugon <2218> upon the neck of the Disciples, which neither the fathers of us neither are we are able to bear? [Deut 28:48/Reve 6:5]

Reve 6:5 is interesting, as it uses the same greek word for "yoke" as the rest on the NT.
Any idea what the black horse and the one riding is symbolizing?

Reve 6:5
And when it up-opens the third seal , I hear of the third living one saying: "Be you coming"!
And I am looking and I see and behold! A black horse
and the one sitting-down upon it having a Yoke/zugon <2218> in the hand of him. [Deut 28:18/Acts 15:10]


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mkgal1 said:

Interesting ^^
I got this from the Jewish Virtual library:
Like a lot of the Bible......it seems there's a lot to be gleaned from just one analogy.

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It is the yoke of slavery, servitude, to our Lord. 2 Timothy 2:3-4 leader of an army, general, commander; get on board and be a Servant of Christ.